Recently written
Severing the Telus umbilical cord
- Image by Darren Hester via Flickr
The first move was finally made last night. It’s been long overdue and I’m happy to be on the path. I’ve taken the first step to getting Telus hands out of my pockets – and they’ve been pretty deeply in there for a long time. Complete disclosure forces me to say that I was a Telus manager for five years and my wife has now been an employee for 11. We met while working there, so not all my associations with the recursive T are bad. However, most of my customer service associations with them are horrific. This could be a very long post, so I’ll endeavour to keep it short.
I’ve been a cash cow for them. Particularly as my sons are now 19 and 16, we have four mobile accounts, our home landline and high speed internet. That’s too many eggs in one basket anyway, but since we’ve had four accounts they’ve been able to count on me for a minimum of $220 in revenue every month. Unlike our US friends who can usually add a new number and pool voice/data in a family cellular plan for a few bucks, now that Telus doesn’t offer family plans (and never did affordably), four accounts with reasonable data/voice runs well over $150 a month. Add another $60 for landline and high speed internet and that’s just shy of $2700 a year. When you look at it that way, the costs are nothing short of obscene. They don’t blend mobility and landline billing and good bundles for being a good customer are pretty much non-existent.